Zombie-proofing Your Home (and maybe keep burglars out too)

I’m a huge fan of the zombie apocalypse TV show The Walking Dead. It got me thinking “What the hell would I do if there was a real-life zombie situation. How would I protect my home from hordes of the undead?” I ended up writing an article on Lifewire.com about the topic of zombie-proofing your home:

It goes into great detail on what you need to do in order to prevent the undead (or any bad guy) from physically breaking into your house.

“But Andy, I have an Alarm system I don’t need zombie-proofing”

An alarm system is not going to keep zombies out, in fact, as we’ve seen on TWD, the sound it makes is just going to attract more of them.

I had a break-in several years ago. The main method burglars and zombies use to get in your house is by one good swift kick to your back or front door. In most cases, that’s all it takes to drive your deadbolt through your door casing. That’s exactly what they did in my case.

Here’s a video of a burglar using a mule kick to break down someone’s door. Notice how easy it was. (skip to about 1:15 to see the actual kick).

Kind of scary seeing how little effort it takes, right? Thankfully, as mentioned in my article, there is a relatively cheap DIY upgrade you can make to hopefully prevent this kind of thing from happening. There is a product called Door Jamb Armor that will reinforce all the weak parts of your door to make it nearly kick-proof. Here’s a video of it in action:

After my break-in, I had Door Jamb Armor installed on all my exterior doors and have never had another break-in, and I’m pretty sure there was a failed attempt at a break-in because I once saw a muddy boot-print on my back door and it wasn’t me. There are other door security products on the market, but the only one I’ve tested is this one. The cost per door is cheap, but you need to have somebody with some fix-it skills install it for you (unless you opt for their “Easy” install kit).